The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Monday, August 20, 2012

So You Say You Want a Pussy Riot?

The Pussy Riot sentences (and the original prosecution) were
misguided and excessive.

Putin undoubtedly found the band’s 90-second escapade of
punk calisthenics in the Church of the Savior offensive and a personal
insult.The Russian Orthodox Church is a
major political prop for Putin and he probably thought he could reassure the
church of his steadfastness as defender of the faith as well as score political
points with conservative Russians with a heavy-handed slapdown.

But now the band has become an international cause celebre
and lodestar for domestic and international opponents of Putin.

In an interesting blurring of the line between journalistic
objectivity and human-rights agitprop, the armchair revolutionaries at the Guardian
chose to create a videofor the band’s latest release showing
the women looking at turns gorgeous, defiant, and adorable.

That, combined with criticism of the sentence from the Obama
administration and other human rights worthies, may be enough to convince Putin
to keep the women in the can to serve their full term.

After all, if the sentences were commuted in response to the
Russian Orthodox Church’s expressions of “foregiveness” and Putin’s own
political calculations, it will be seen as a victory for the band—and inspiration
for copycats and excuse for foreign meddling-- and not a welcome display of mercy by the administration.

However, it remains to be seen if shifting the terms of
debate to the free-speech rights of punk rock provocateurs and away from Putin’s
close and unhealthy ties to the Russian Orthodox Church (which the Pussy Riot
outrage was designed to highlight) will accelerate the erosion of his power.

Here’s something I wrote last November on Putin’s religious strategy on the occasion of the visit of a treasured relic, the Girdle of St.
Mary, to Russia. The massive turnout to adore the relic implies that there is more political capital for Putin in championing the church than appeasing the followers of Pussy Riot:

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

One thing that’s pretty clear is that
religious movements are, for the most part, conservative and have served
as bulwarks of authoritarianism (and a shield against challenges to the
wealth and power of the privileged) at least since the days of the
Social Democrats.

Authoritarian atheism, after a brief, 20th century heyday under Hitler, Mao, and Stalin, is perhaps headed for the dustbin of history.

Religion is too good for business, billionaires, and bosses, both in liberal democracies and post-Communist states.

Modern plutocracies have rediscovered the fact that there’s nothing like
appeals to religious identity to split the electorate and marginalize
those obstreperous liberal activists whose political views usually
combine irreligious sentiments with enthusiasm for democracy and a nasty
penchant for economic justice.

I think the Russians under Putin have broken the code. Via RIA Novosti:

A remarkable procession is currently taking place in Russia…

The
Belt of the Virgin Mary, otherwise referred to as the Precious Sash, or
Cincture, of Our Most Holy Lady Theotokos – the holy treasure of the
Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, is travelling abroad for
the first time. The Belt is travelling in style. It flies in a private
jet, chartered by the tour’s organizer – the influential St. Andrew
Foundation, and is accompanied by six Vatopedi monks. In St. Petersburg,
it was welcomed by none other than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In
Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth largest city, Governor Alexander Misharin
and the region’s bishop, Metropolitan Kirill, met the relic with the
guard of honor before a procession of some 15,000 people took it to the
cathedral.

The
numbers are stunning indeed. In St. Petersburg, estimated one million
people came to venerate the Belt in three days and nights, according to
the local media. People stood in line for twelve to fourteen hours to be
able to kiss the silver box containing the piece of camel wool fabric
believed to have been woven and worn by the Virgin Mary, and take a
small band blessed on the relic. In Yekaterinburg it was 300,000, in
Krasnoyarsk – 100,000. The relic has already been to the country’s Far
East – in Vladivostok, and the Far North – in Norilsk, beyond the Arctic
Circle. Volgograd and Stavropol in the South are in the days to come.
And it is hard to imagine what kind of crowds will gather in Moscow
when, by the end of November, the relic arrives in the capital before
leaving Russia for good.

According to the Sacred
Tradition and the history of our Church, the Most Holy Theotokos [Virgin
Mary] three days after she fell asleep she rose from the dead and
ascended in body to the heavens. During her ascension, she gave her Holy
Belt to the Apostle Thomas. Thomas, along with the rest of the holy
Apostles, opened up her grave and didn't find the body of the Theotokos.
In this way the Holy Belt is proof for our Church of her Resurrection
and bodily ascension to the heavens, and, in a word, at her metastasis.

Clerics said they hoped the relic would help more Russian women become mothers
as the influential Russian Orthodox Church is actively promoting
motherhood to help the government curtail a population decline.

Church officials in several
cities plan to take the relic to pregnancy centres that counsel women
contemplating an abortion, the Russian Orthodox Church said.

“This event is of huge
significance especially when it comes to strengthening people’s faith,”
Father Kirill, a spokesman for the Saint Petersburg diocese, told AFP.

“And the fact that this is such a
singular relic helping women is especially important for our city and
our country, where the demographic situation leaves much to be desired.”

Russian leaders have called the shrinking population a matter of national security.

The country’s latest census
released earlier this year showed that the country’s population had
shrunk by 2.2 million people since 2002 and now stands at 142.9 million.

There are also photos of Putin and Medvedev
solemnly observing the reliquary. Putin chose to appear in his Action
Man uniform (no tie, unbuttoned collar), inviting the question of
whether his expression is one of stunned reverence or sullen challenge
to a potential rival.

All joking aside, Vladimir Putin has
jettisoned the official atheism of the KGB and has established the
Russian state as a vigorous promoter of the Russian Orthodox Church--and
vice versa, as Michael Binyon wrote for The Humanist in 2008:

Putin
… is fervently and ostentatiously observant in his religious beliefs.
As a result, the Russian Orthodox Church, now richer and more powerful
than at any time for almost a century, has been at the centre of all
state ceremonies, is a strong supporter of Putin’s policies and has
resumed its traditional role as the spiritual arm of the Russian state.
Restored churches can be seen everywhere. There are now some 28,000
parish churches in Russia, 732 monasteries and convents and thousands of
priests training in seminaries. Putin delivers speeches at major
religious festivals; in return the Patriarch acts as his agent in
extending his control over all sectors of society. Church and Communist
Party have become almost interchangeable.

As reported by Ministry Values in 2010, President Medvedev is equally forthright about playing the religious card:

An icon of Jesus hidden in a Kremlin gate used by Soviet leaders but bricked over in the 1930s during communist times was restored on Saturday to public view.

Russian
President Medvedev, on the day that marks the Virgin Mary being taken
into heaven, said the "Saviour Smolensky" icon, which depicts Jesus
holding open the New Testament, with Russian saints below him, will
provide moral support to Russia.

"Now that we've got the icon back, our country secures an additional defense."

The “influential St. Andrew Foundation”
cited in the Novosti report—the outfit that sent the private jet to pick
up the belt—is a religious foundation run by Vladimir Yakunin,
a member of Putin’s inner circle and reputedly a veteran of the KGB’s
First Directorate. He is also president of the gigantic state-owned
Russian Railways.

Presumably, Yakunin is there to lock up the
support of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy for Putin and whatever
subsequent strongman craves well-financed, pervasive, and activist
backing from the conservative church.

In 2010, European CEO breathlessly pegged him as “the man to watch” as a potential successor to Putin:

This
ex-KBG spook is discreet, bright and endowed with a potentially huge
powerbase. Vladimir Yakunin has a neighbouring lake-side dacha with
prime minister (and former president) Putin. He’s often mentioned in the
same breath as other successors to his all-powerful boss…

He’s patently bright and
has certainly proved himself able and willing to move with the times.
After the Soviet Union collapsed he moved into banking and business
before being appointed as deputy transport minister in 2000. Many ex-KGB
personnel were able to take advantage of new industry licences and
Yakunin, along with some physicist friends, were no exception. In time
they established Bank Russia, which later financed Putin’s re-election
campaign in 2004.

Yet it would be a mistake to
label this discreetly influential man as just another power-hungry party
apparatchik or ex-KGB “siloviki”, the unflattering term given to
describe the network of ex and current state-security officers. He has a
fascination with Russia’s religious legacy and has helped launch a
foundation that encourages reconciliation of the Russian Orthodox
Church.

Yakunin’s “fascination with Russia’s
religious legacy”, and his evolution from amoral KGB apparatchik to
creepy, "values"-promoting bigot is reflected in remarks like this:

The head of the Council of
Trustees of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation and JSC Russian
Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, believes tolerance to homosexuality is
harmful.

"I think traditional family
values and childbearing should not be substituted with some notorious
imitations invented by the homosexual propaganda which could be only
arbitrarily called attributes of a democratic society," he said at the
opening ceremony of the 15th World Russian People's Council held on
Wednesday in Moscow.

Yakunin told that he wanted to
address this issue in his speech delivered at the Berlin forum last
year, but he was warned that "this country will hardly understand you;
and you may have troubles here."

"Nothing of the kind. There was
not a single protest made and not a single person left the room because I
mentioned that the propaganda of homosexuality was the same pollutant
for the social environment as other pollutants were for the natural
one," he said.

Getting back to the Cincture of the Virgin
Mary, another version of the relic is held by the Jacobite Syrian Church
in Homs—yes, Homs, ground zero of the anti-Assad rebellion-- under
considerably less glamorous conditions.

The reliquary, and a history of Syria’s
girdle and religious art showing its bestowal on St. Thomas, can be
viewed on a very interesting Flickr feed by Rhoneil Victor de Leon.

On its website,
the Cathedral of St. Mary in Homs claims its belt is the one that Mary
dropped to St. Thomas from heaven, was brought to Syria in 476 and
hidden in the church, and was rediscovered in 1953.

Remarkably, a piece of the Homs belt resides in Jacksonville, Florida at the Mother of God Zunoro Syrian Orthodox Church.
The Patriarch of Damascus arranged to bestow a section of the belt on
the new church. The relic was first adored at a sister church in
Paramus, NJ, before taking up permanent residence in Florida in 1998.

Any competing
claim for the Homs belt is not addressed on the Mt. Athos website, which
plausibly traces the provenance of its belt back to the Byzantine
Empire in the 12th century and its donation to Mt. Athos by Emperor John the 6th Katakouzinos (1347-1355).